Austin City Council to vote on firefighters union deal on Thursday

The Austin City Council will vote on Thursday to ratify the latest iteration of the collective bargaining agreement between the city and the Austin Firefighters Association.

The union’s president, Bob Nicks, said negotiators worked for two months to hash out details related to pay, disciplinary action, training and overtime issues for firefighters.

As part of the 103-page agreement, the Fire Department also will continue to run its hiring process under U.S. Department of Justice consent decree provisions, which were put into place after the federal agency announced that it had found evidence that the city’s 2012 and 2013 hiring processes had discriminated against African-American and Hispanic candidates.